To the Bowels of the earth! But not back again
by Baby Kat Snophlake
Summary: Lloyd and company visit Shadow in his home lair, only to come upon a tiring revelation upon successfully forming a pact with him...


**EDIT-A/N:** For those who have already reviewed, thank you, I truly appreciate your feedback. But if you are new to this story, please do not review unless you have **constructive criticism** to give me. I don't want to be told how good I am or how much I sucked if you don't have a reason for saying so. I'd rather you say nothing at all if you can't tell me why you liked or hated something. If I am out of character, if my writing sucks, if my plot sucks, if my description sucks, if my dialogue sucks, if my style sucks, if my vocabulary sucks, if I'm not interesting you, if I put in a deal-breaker, if I irritated a pet peeve, if I am missing something, if I don't meet expectation, if you think I have potential but have too much to say, if you wish I had done something--anything-- differently, if you just plain hate what I've done with a character, plot, action, description, suspense, if I failed at an attempt at using a writing tool, if I have spelling errors, if I repeat words, if I use the wrong word, if the first sentence didn't grab your attention and you want to hit the back button, if I have grammar errors, or any kind of errors at all for that matter, if something is wrong or doesn't feel right and you just can't put your finger on it, if you hate my title or summary, even if all you can say is, "you want to know why, but I'm not sure so I can't tell you. It just doesn't work" **with a copy of the quote that doesn't work for you**, please do me the honor of telling me so, even if it's in the form of an email, PM, or review, I don't care how you do it, just tell me. Yes, I am begging for concrit. But please don't leave feedback that simply says "that was good. Nice job." I want to know the **why**. Thank you.

As you would probably have guessed, this takes place in the Shadow Temple. Enjoy!

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**To the bowels of the earth! But not back again….**

**By Baby Kat Snophlake  
**

"Yes! We finally got all five pieces of Shadow gathered together!" Lloyd exclaimed, staring down a long flight of stairs leading deeper into the basement of shadows. "Now all we have to do is lead them down these stairs right? That shouldn't be so bad!" Again, his best friend, Genis, wondered how long the boy's enthusiasm was going to last. He betted that before they reached the bottom of the staircase, Lloyd was going to be so exhausted, someone would have to carry him the rest of the way.

After the first flight of stairs, they ended up on a small flat that led to another set of stairs, more flats, more stairs, and still more flats and stairs. Though Genis was wrong about the first flight of stairs, he turned out to be right by the time they reached the fifth set of stairs. It was tiring enough to have to drag the pieces of the Summon Spirit down to the very deepest levels of the planet, but having to go back to retrace steps to gather the ones that strayed made the trip seem even longer than it normally should. Eventually, Lloyd decided it was better to tie them up and carry them that way. The only thing that stopped him was the fact that the pieces of shadow, literally were just that… shadows.

The rest of the group started to feel just tired as their young leader, except Presea who seemed to be watching her steps rather closely. Finally, they managed to reach the bottom after eight flights of long staircases and descending flats. The five pieces of the Summon Spirit gathered themselves at the altar and became one as Shadow. After explaining to the Summon Spirit that they wanted to make a pact, and Sheena had asked to annul the previous pact he had with Mithos, everyone braced for the fight against Shadow.

Shadow was seriously impressed by their skills, conceding to the pact, and allowing himself to be used the odd group of adventurers. Excited all over again at Sheena's achievements, Lloyd turned to the staircase and paled.

"Wait… now we have make our way back up again?" He choked.

"Yes, that would be three hundred-twenty five stairs." Presea stated simply. "In our current state, we should reach the top in four days."

"Oh God…" In a unanimous decision, the group decided camping out in the shadows wasn't such a bad idea.

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The idea came to me while I was playing the game and realized how tiring it has to be to gather those shadows, lead them down eight flights of (and yes, I counted) 325 stairs, only to fight a summon spirit, and have to crawl back up those 325 stairs. I give those guys a lot of credit  
being able to accomplish this, among other usually ignored feats they manage during the adventure. But then again, maybe I need to back out of the fantasy world and back into reality if this what I end up thinking about. Where's the fun in that?


End file.
